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Enlarge ImageRequest to buy this photoUrals Federal University Press ServicePieces of a meteorite lie in a laboratory in Yekaterinburg, Russia. Researchers from the Urals Federal University in Yekaterinburg say that the pieces found near Lake Cherbarkul are from the meteor that exploded over the region Friday.

By Andrew E. Kramer and Ellen BarryThe New York Times • Tuesday February 19, 2013 6:58 AM

CHELYABINSK, Russia — Russian scientists say tiny stony fragments found on the ice of Lake
Chebarkul are pieces of a meteorite that punched a hole in the lake, though Russia’s Emergency
Services Ministry said earlier that a team of divers had found no evidence that the meteorite had
landed there.

Viktor Grokhovsky, a member of the Russian Academy of Science’s committee on meteorites, said
scientists have examined 53 fragments they collected around the hole in the lake, all less than a
centimeter in size.

“The fragments we have found are traces of the outer layer of the meteorite — there is a melted
crust and so forth — which means that the basic mass lies there, in the lake,” Grokhovsky told the
Interfax news service yesterday. He said he thought the meteorite was probably no larger than 2
feet in diameter.

Since the meteor illuminated the sky Friday morning, a parade of journalists and
curiosity-seekers have trekked across the ice of Lake Chebarkul, about 50 miles from the city of
Chelyabinsk, one of four sites that the government thinks experienced a significant impact. A
witness who was on the lake shore Friday said she saw a star growing brighter until it resembled
the sun and she instinctively closed her eyes.

Grokhovsky, of Urals Federal University, said a group of local scientists visited the lake and
gathered the fragments around the hole in the ice, which is about 20 feet in diameter.

He said preliminary examination suggested the fragments were stone, composed of about 10 percent
iron. In comments to RIA Novosti, he said emergency officials had not allowed the scientists to
approach the edge of the hole, but they retrieved 53 fragments and delivered them to a university
laboratory for analysis.

On Saturday, a spokeswoman for the Emergency Services Ministry said a dive expedition had been
completed and “found no traces of the meteorite,” Interfax reported. Igor Murog, the deputy
governor of the Chelyabinsk district, told the news service that he thought the hole in Lake
Chebarkul had not been caused by a meteorite.

NASA has said the meteor weighed about 7,000 tons when it entered the Earth’s atmosphere and
exploded over the Ural Mountains region around 9:20 a.m. local time Friday with the force of 500
kilotons of TNT. Small fragments likely reached the Earth, NASA said.